tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4936176559695627707.post572670254944152464..comments2023-03-25T04:43:09.156-07:00Comments on Pathologos: Yeah? Well, you're a capitalist: Part twoIainhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15197666388360786350noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4936176559695627707.post-87177539935666311252009-01-29T13:19:00.000-08:002009-01-29T13:19:00.000-08:00Lain, these are really great and thoughtful commen...Lain, these are really great and thoughtful comments, and I wish I had time to treat them all closely. Maybe in the next few days I'll try to write something to help clarify this tag cloud thing.<BR/><BR/>The symbolic efficiency stuff comes out of modernist rhetorical theory, or that's where I take it. All language, for Kenneth Burke, et al, is symbolic action based on motives that are peculiar to the situations that enact them. Language is active in this case, signifying motives. <BR/><BR/>Those motives are lost in tag-clouds. The tag-cloudification in a way happens prior to flarf's use of them. Following a literary studies bias for interpretation over action, flarf poems stress multiple meanings from the coordinated efforts of their words.<BR/><BR/>It's only "capitalist" I think in that flarf doesn't do anything to draw attention to motives that sustain it. It's another ironic product on the cultural stage from which to sample. <BR/><BR/>These are all quick responses. I'll develop this more down the road. Essential to this debate for me is the disciplinary distance between literature and rhetoric embodied in this debate.Dalehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13285558511682553411noreply@blogger.com